The forbidden pleasure. Lesbian relationships in the legislation of the early medieval church

Abstract

The penitential books, relevant sources to examine the history of mentality, society, customs and law in the early Middle Ages, help shed some light on lesbianism, a phenomenon otherwise very poorly documented at the time. The lesbian relationships can so be studied both in their specific and within the more general issue of considering homosexuality as a whole by the Christian culture of the time. Through the analysis of the provisions of the authors of penance for sexual relations between women we'll try to answer several questions regarding the kind of penance assigned to guilty on the basis of specific acts and their possible diversification according to the social and civil status or the age of the women involved. Moreover, in order to clarify the perception of female homosexuality we'll proceed in a comparison of gender, comparing what was stipulated for relations between women with what was instead established to punish sexual relations between males.